Telecommunication carriers are increasingly deploying bundled or multi-service packages to provide reduced access charges to increase customer retention. For example, the boom in digital subscriber line subscriptions has led many carriers to bundle high bandwidth Internet service with traditional voice services and/or wireless services. Already, carriers are feeling the strain of successfully upgrading existing infrastructures to meet the high-bandwidth services being demanded by customers.
Transition networks are commonly utilized to provide customer access to voice and data networks. An access network interfaces with voice and data switches each respectively interfacing with, for example, a packet backbone network and a public switched telephone network. Typically, various classes of voice switches are required within the transition network (e.g., class 4 switches for providing interexchange carrier (IXC) voice services and class 5 switches for providing end office voice services). Multiple media gateways are then required to interface with a data access switch.
Significant amounts of labor are expended to maintain and upgrade the transition networks as new services become available. A move to unified access is clearly advantageous and promises to propel emerging technologies that are not easily implemented over current large scale networks, for example voice over internet protocol (VoIP), voice over DSL (VoDSL), UMTS and other wireless formats, time division multiplex (TDM), and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), to a broader degree of acceptance.
Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology provides access to GSM and GPRS mobile services over unlicensed spectrum technologies, such as WiFi (802.11) and Bluetooth. For example, by deploying UMA technology, service providers may enable subscribers to roam and handover between cellular networks and public and private unlicensed wireless networks using dual-mode mobile handsets. With UMA, subscribers may receive a consistent user experience for their mobile voice and data services as they transition between networks. Some of the purposes and potential benefits of UMA may include resolving the lack of radio frequency (RF) capacity in a wireless network, reaching subscribers at their homes in an advantageous manner relative to traditional wireless access, and reducing network and other operational and capital expenditures. As UMA gains a broader degree of acceptance, service providers may be able to offer greater service distinction and differentiation, and network capacity may be gained through IP networks and unlicensed RF spectrum.